Industrial creativity Definition and coaching methods

Since the end of the Second World War, the economy of Western societies has been characterized by successive phases of evolution. The first, commonly referred to as the "Glorious Thirty", ran from 1945 to 1975, and was defined by unprecedented economic prosperity. The Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe had a considerable impact on the old continent's economy. During these thirty years, reconstruction was more important than innovation. From then on, industrialists drew on the knowledge and skills acquired through planning and mass production processes. At this time, we see the emergence of structured and structuring work methods such as Value Analysis.

The following thirty years were part of a progressively globalized economy. This led to an intensification of rigor and performance processes. These "rough" years saw an intensified rationalization of production activities and a diversification of competitive approaches, underpinned by the emergence of new technological fields and increased interactions due to globalization. Methods are developed using a structuralist approach based on previous years. The LEAN Manufacturing method, derived successively from Taylorism, Fordism and Ohnism, is a prime example.

According to Latour, a new era, defined by the following contradictory injunction, is upon us: "On the one hand, 'innovate or die'; on the other, 'be careful or perish'! It's enough to drive you mad. What on earth does 'innovate carefully' mean?

In the field of Industrial Engineering, this concept of innovation, less explicitly expressed and even less extensive, is nevertheless developed both by researchers and by the heads of major companies.

In February 2011, the "Engadget" website published a memo from Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, stating that the company had failed miserably:

"We [Nokia] aren't even fighting with the right weapons [...] The battle of devices has become a battle of ecosystems, where the ecosystems in question are formed, not just by the device's software and hardware, but also by developers, applications, sales, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications, and other aspects besides. Our competitors aren't taking market share from us with devices, they're taking market share from us with complete ecosystems."

The mutation, decay or expansion of markets is a worrying and extremely rapid phenomenon. These phenomena are, in part, unpredictable. The only robust constant the company can rely on is the ever-increasing need for change.

To respond to such variations in constraints, particularly those linked to market uncertainties, the deterministic approach seems ill-suited, particularly...